When I couldn’t find Rhys inside the building, I went outside and checked to make sure the van was still parked on the street. “She’s visiting with Miss Wheeler,” Rondell Cherry said when I reentered the building. “Want me to knock on the door and tell them you’re waiting?”
I shook my head. “Let them talk.”
I went back out and sat on the steps and nearly two hours passed before Rhys appeared with the old woman. In the meantime the school had cleared out, with more than a few interesting hair results and as many hysterical victims. One girl looked as though she had a nest of snakes on top of her head, all of them alive.
“Jack Charbonnet, meet Gail Wheeler,” Rhys said. “Mrs. Wheeler, this is my friend Jack Charbonnet.”
I shook Mrs. Wheeler’s hard little hand, surprised by her strength. “Nice to meet you, Jack,” she said, without bothering to remove the cigarette from her mouth.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
She was wearing the same outfit from the other day, and up close she looked even more fragile than she had when I first saw her coming down the stairs. Her skin was splotched with age marks and past the scratched, murky lenses of her glasses the whites of her eyes shone yellow. “Pleased with your haircut, young man?”
“Yes, thank you. Bonelle Louvrier took good care of me.”
“Oh, Bonelle’s a fine girl. Tonight when you say your prayers you need to make sure to mention Bonelle. You know what happened, don’t you?” She gave me a wink and said, “You went and won the hairdo lottery, son.”
Gail Wheeler was still waving—waving with a hand up over her head, and the cigarette poking out of her mouth—as we left and pulled into traffic, headed downtown.
“She even smelled old,” I said.
“I didn’t notice.”
“You know that old smell that old people have?”
Rhys looked at me. “Not really. All I smelled was the smoke.”
I shrugged. I no longer was so sure about it either. The only thing I was sure about was that everything I said was wrong. “What did the two of you do in there for so long?”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“You were in her office for two hours. Nothing happened in two hours?”
“The mural didn’t come up, if that’s what you mean. Mainly we watched TV.”
“You watched TV for two hours while I sat outside on the hard cement?”
“I didn’t tell you to sit on the hard cement. Mrs. Wheeler keeps this big Zenith console next to her desk—you know, one of those floor models from the seventies, with a plastic frame molded to look like some fancy baroque thing?”
“Yeah, I know the kind you mean.”
“When I walked in, the lights were out and she was sitting in the dark watching Maury Povich—this little lady with her hands folded on her stomach. I told her I was with a friend who needed a haircut. She seemed glad to have the company. I liked her. I think I’d like her better if she didn’t smoke so much, but she really seems like a good person. And she’s funny, Jack, that woman is a hoot. She made a big scene of having me swear on a stack of Bibles that I wasn’t one of those agents from Baton Rouge. But of course it wasn’t a stack of Bibles—it was a dictionary and some old magazines. She’s a tough old bird, Mrs. Wheeler is, but she’s facing some serious shit. And she needed to talk. I want you to always be polite to her, do you hear?”
“I’ll be polite, Rhys. I’m polite to everybody.”
She drove on a ways and it seemed she was trying to decide whether to tell me the rest. She glanced over at me and I nodded. “You might as well say it.”
“Some while ago,” she began, “Mrs. Wheeler came up with a scheme to keep the school from going under. There are thousands of ways for kids to receive school funding these days, and she decided to explore a few of these options. She started applying for state and federal work-study grants, Pell grants, that sort of thing. She filled out the applications herself, and she used personal information from former students whose records were still in her files. Their Social Security numbers, for instance. She also started inflating enrollment figures with ghost students to qualify the school for extra funding. All along she says she saw it as a kind of loan and meant to pay it back.”
“But she would say that, wouldn’t she?”
“What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t want to go to jail.”
“I believe her, Jack. These agents just subpoenaed the school’s records. It could take weeks or months before they decide what to do. But she’s definitely in trouble. Apparently everything began to unravel after Mr. Wheeler died and another beauty school opened in Mid-City. Enrollment crashed, and Mrs. Wheeler had to let teachers go. Earlier this week she was going to fire Mr. Cherry but she couldn’t go through with it. He has a wife and five children at home. You know what else? All of the students in this year’s class are minorities—either Hispanic or African American—and several of the women are single mothers. ‘What will my girls do?’ Mrs. Wheeler kept saying.”
“I’ll tell you what they can do, Rhys. They can go to that other hair school.” When she looked over at me I said, “Forgive my cynicism, but it sounds like a con job. And she confides all this to you, a total stranger? I’m sorry, Rhys, I don’t buy it.”
She considered this for a moment, chewing her lower lip, then said, “Ever sit next to a stranger on a plane and tell her intimacies about yourself that you’d never imagine sharing with the people closest to you?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I have, Jack. And maybe I was that person for Mrs. Wheeler today. That person on the plane.”
We reached Martin Luther King and she parked behind my car on the other side of the boulevard from the studio. The weather was starting to turn and the wind sent paper trash skittering past us. Even in the gloaming you could see thunderheads charging in our direction from out in the west. “When do you plan to tell her about Levette’s mural?” I said.
She took the keys out of the ignition but made no move to leave the van. She sat staring off in the distance at the dark, boiling clouds.
“Are you going to tell her about the mural, Rhys?”
“No. No, I’m not, Jack. That wouldn’t be wise at this time. And you’re not going to tell her either. Do I have your word on that?”
“But if she’s prosecuted, Rhys, and if the government shuts down the school or seizes the building or puts her in jail, what happens then? Any chance of recovering the mural will be lost.”
She shook her head. “I’d never let it get to that.”
I tried to hold her eyes with mine but there was something about her gaze that made me turn away. “What are you telling me?”
“We’re going to help her,” she said.
“Help her? Aren’t we a little late for that? We can’t fix her mistakes, Rhys. I mean, we can’t change what she’s done.”
“But we can get that mural.”
“Rhys…?”
“We’ll go in at night when nobody’s there. I know how Levette hung the thing, it’s all there in his file: four canvas panels attached to the wall using tacks and wallpaper paste. All we have to do is make a replacement mural to swap out with the original. Same awful color, same water damage, same holes for air-conditioning vents. It’ll take a little work, but do you have any idea how easy this is going to be? We can do this, Jack.”
“No, we can’t, Rhys, and we won’t. We won’t do this at all.”
“I’m not going to let the government have that painting. Listen to me. We can sell it privately, we can have a private auction. It’s the only way. Don’t forget, Jack: Levette’s mural was a WPA commission. Do you know what that means?”
“It means it was a government job.”
“Right, a government job. You ready for a little history lesson?” Before I could answer, she said, “Back during the Depression people couldn’t afford to buy bread and soup much less paintings and sculptures, so the government created a number of re
lief programs to help people who were struggling to survive. The WPA, they called it. Stands for Works Progress Administration. Some of the greatest artists in our country’s history were awarded grants to create works for the WPA, and they practiced every kind of medium imaginable—from immense murals like Levette’s to small etchings the size of postage stamps. Most of these items went into public buildings—post offices, railroad stations, courthouses, college lecture halls, libraries, places like that. Nobody knows for sure how many of these artworks were created—the government bean counters didn’t bother to keep track—but the number is in the hundreds of thousands. Well, World War Two ends and people go back to work, and what does the government do with its collection? The government sticks it in warehouses, puts it out with the trash and destroys still others it doesn’t like. Imagine that, Jack. Some ignorant bubba down the road in Baton Rouge decides he doesn’t like all the black people shown praying in a painting by Conrad Albrizio, so he takes out the same pocketknife he uses to pick his ugly, diseased teeth and he rips the thing to shreds.”
“Did it really happen that way, Rhys?”
“It happened exactly that way. As a matter of fact, it happened that way every day for years. Murals like Levette’s were routinely painted over, and magnificent bronze sculptures were sold off for scrap. It was cultural genocide, is what it was. It was nothing less than the artistic soul of the country being gutted, and those endowed with the public trust did little to stop it. No, let me rephrase that: Those endowed with the public trust were the ones responsible for it.” She reached over and tapped me hard on the shoulder. “Forgive me,” she said. “I get wound up sometimes.”
“You’ve got a bee in your bonnet, all right. You’ve got a whole hive of bees.”
“I’m sure you can predict what happens next,” she said. “Years go by and those WPA art objects that did survive start to become popular with collectors. People discover not only the beauty in paintings produced during the period, but they learn to appreciate their historic significance. The paintings are about something. They’re a specific record of a lost America and they possess an honesty and a realism that expose most other art movements as cheap, intellectual fakery. So, as objects from the WPA become more and more popular, their values start to climb. And as their values climb, the government suddenly decides that it still owns them. The government says, ‘Yes, we allowed our artwork to pass into the hands of collectors and dealers. And, yes, we sat back and watched while these people took on huge financial risk to create a market for the stuff. But—guess what, everybody?—we want our art collection back.’”
“Have they been able to get it back?”
“A lot of it. Let me tell you how crazy it’s become. The feds in Washington assign an agency, the General Services Administration, to start identifying WPA art. If this agency discovers that you, a private citizen, are in possession of something created for the WPA, it sends you a letter stating that you have the option of returning the object to the government or donating it to a public institution. It’s still theirs, in other words. Want to hear how absurd it’s gotten? You know eBay, the Internet auction site?”
“Sure.”
“Lo and behold if WPA items don’t start appearing for sale on eBay. And how does the government respond? This goes to show the gall of these people. The same government that gave these things away or locked them in warehouses for rats to eat or burned them in incinerators… this same government starts contacting eBay sellers and saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute, friend, you do not have clear title to that work of art and we’re ordering you to stop this auction.’ Can you believe that, Jack? The federal government is monitoring art sales on eBay. Ask agents with the GSA and they’ll deny it, but I’m telling you it happens.”
“You’re also telling me something else, aren’t you, Rhys?”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“You’re saying that Levette’s mural still belongs to the federal government. Or at least that the government might well claim ownership if ever it were pulled out of Wheeler, restored and shopped around.”
“You have been paying attention.”
“Tell me if I got this right, Rhys. In ’41 the government orders Levette’s mural painted over, effectively destroying it. But if tomorrow the painting were offered for sale at auction, the government likely would intervene, stop the transaction and order that the painting be donated to a public institution. Either that or it would demand that it be returned to them… I mean, returned to it—to the same government that tried to get rid of the painting in the first place and, furthermore, that might’ve prompted Levette to kill himself.”
“Good, Jack. Now let me ask you this question: Do you think the government gave a damn that Levette’s mural was still in the post office when it decided to deaccession that old building?”
“No.”
“More than just that, Jack. Shit no, fuck no and hell no. And the only reason the government would care about the mural today—notwithstanding its potential historic significance—is because it’s worth a lot of money.”
“How much is a lot?” I said.
She pushed her door open and stepped out in the street. “One million? Two million? We’ll never know for sure until we put it out there and let the likes of Tommy Smallwood fight for it.”
I followed her across the street, but when she reached the entrance there was no invitation to join her inside. She closed and locked the security door behind her and stood leaning against the bars, her face framed in the narrow space. “It came to me while I was in Mrs. Wheeler’s office,” she said. “I’m sitting there trying to figure out how to help this woman and I actually pray for an answer and you know what, Jack? I got one.”
“God spoke to you,” I said. “Is that what you’re telling me?” Rhys held me with another of her weird stares. “You know how we know things, Jack? How as human beings we just know things or at least intuit them? You might think I’m crazier than shit but all of a sudden I knew what to do. Levette’s mural. We go in, Jack. We go in and get the sonofabitch.”
That night the storm blew in and knocked out power all along Bayou Saint John. The wind blew the trees in the garden into odd configurations against the black sky and rain fell so hard it sounded as if the roof of the garçonnière was going to cave in. I stayed in my bedroom waiting for the electrical service to be restored. I read art books by the light of a lantern until it ran low on oil. Then I read by flashlight until the batteries went dead. I listened to weather coverage on my transistor radio. Local meteorologists were calling it a storm but it packed the intensity of a hurricane. I stepped outside for a minute and the air smelled of a briny sea and the birds weren’t moving. It was so hot and damp the walls were sweating.
Toward dawn I fell asleep and when I awoke it was to the shift of the floor taking on new weight. Someone was in the room, stepping across the wood and making it creak. You’re dreaming, I said to myself. But I listened more closely and there was no denying it. Either Lowenstein’s ghost was checking up on me or a burglar was investigating the place. I’d kept a baseball bat near my bed in anticipation of just such a development, and it was what I reached for now. Raising the length of fire-tempered wood above my head, and pausing long enough to register Pete Rose’s signature scripted across the barrel, I raced into the adjoining room and spotted the intruder advancing for the door. In seconds I was upon him, whooping in full battle cry. He wheeled around to confront me and I somehow stopped the bat’s momentum and sent it smashing against the wall. Plaster broke off in chunks and a heave of white dust. “Jesus,” I shouted, the word lost in the fount of obscenities spoken by my intruder.
It was Lowenstein. Although I’d never met the man, I had no doubt as to his identity, having glimpsed him enough times fleeing from windows to build an adequate physical profile. Rainwater streaked down his large, gray face and the few remaining strands of hair on his head clung to his scalp. He looked terrified. Flannel night-clothes, soaked, hung from
his small, shivering form. He held a flashlight by his side, and he lifted it now, however late, to protect himself. “Don’t you touch me,” he croaked.
“God, man, you’re the one who came uninvited into my apartment. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you knock?”
“I did knock,” he said. “I knocked repeatedly.” He pointed to the French doors that led to the cloister and the garden. “My nurse left to make sure her home was safe against the storm. And, look there, a branch from the old oak came down. I was concerned about your well-being, Mr. Charbonnet.”
I nudged past him and stood at the window. The branch had leveled the garden bench where I’d spent so many solitary hours napping and reading my art publications. “Who was Wiltz Lowenstein?” I suddenly heard myself say. “Are you Wiltz Lowenstein, Mr. Lowenstein?”
He reached a trembling hand for the doorknob. “I don’t know why I should be expected to answer that,” he said.
“Was it your nickname? Was it that, by chance? Was it Wiltz?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Charbonnet.”
His wheelchair stood on the damp bricks of the cloister, and outside now he sat in it and began pushing himself back to the house. I stepped out after him, into the swirling mist. “For a second I thought you were somebody else,” I shouted after him.
“And you were right,” he called out in response, never looking back.
I was sitting on a patio chair in the blue shade of the cloister, watching Lowenstein’s team of gardeners remove the downed branch from the oak tree and replace the bench, when Patrick Marion surprised me with a visit. He came striding around the corner of the house, sweat running down his face and dampening his shirt. He seemed to be in a great hurry. When he saw me he signaled for me to follow him to the front of the house. “Awful loud here,” he shouted over the noise of chain saws.
I slipped my bare feet into a pair of loafers and hurried after him, watching the windows for Lowenstein, although the old geezer never did make an appearance.
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